To keep tabs on the vessel her creators included an Iridium short burst data modem with a backup system made from a SPOT satellite tracker using a PIC microcontroller to trigger a transmission every six hours. The sailing systems are a conglomeration of a Gumstix board, GPS, a windshield wiper motor to control the sail, and a tiller pilot for steering. A set of solar panels helps to top off the lead-acid batteries that power the system.

Unfortunately the old gal has encountered problems. You can see from the tracking data that, although it sailed 500 km in the last twelve days, she is still just off the coast of Ireland. The primary tracking system has failed, which could signal a system-wide computer failure. We hope the team will eventually recover the vessel as we’re interested in finding out what caused this unfortunate turn of events.

Keep in mind that the SPOT device may not work well in the middle of the Atlantic, I know from working with similar devices. The Globalstar simplex network requires a nearby groundstation. So keep hope!

Automakers and energy storage startups are racing to create a lightweight battery that won’t interfere with a car’s all-electric range or design, and lead is one of the heaviest elements known to science. It’s not an obvious choice. so really.. why they using lead acid batteries?

Redundancy and design for “graceful degradation” tends to determine survivability of unmanned systems. It seems simplistic to presume that redundancies can compensate for unmanned situations. Or can they? In many cases- it’s more about how graceful those fail recovery designs can become at mitigating whatever chance throws at them.

If a single failed component can kill a mission-perhaps that design needs review. Yes, there are practical limits to even the best designs we can create- but increasingly fewer of them are affected by things other than price or dimensional constraints.

Getting a boat to do what this one has done is still a non-trivial set of things.

Replication of critical systems only “works” if a failed system can be kept from impacting the mission itself. As in the Mars Rovers where drag from a failed motor became a major impairment.

A little off topic here, but can somebody explain the rationale of microtransat’s time penalty?

The effective time for the transatlantic competition (penalty included) is the real time * sqrt(4)/sqrt(length in meters). With 4m being the maximum length allowed. So basically a short (1m) boat suffers a 100% penalty (double time)?!?!

Wouldn’t the smaller boat start off at a disadvantage anyway? I’d assume a very short boat would have more trouble navigating the rough seas and do worse to begin with than a larger boat. What am I missing here?

Hey, dumb-ass. First, learn to spell correctly and learn your geography. It is Colombia. Second, lame joke. Third, they may manufacture it here, but bone-heads like you consume it here. Fourth, Mexico is #1 long time ago, Colombia is not.

@cknopp, dumb-asses like you need to learn more.. First, learn to spell correctly and learn your geography. It is Colombia. Second, lame joke. Third, they may manufacture it there, but bone-heads like you consume it here. Fourth, Mexico is #1 long time ago, Colombia is not. Do your homework.

@sqnewton maybe you should do your own homework. Colombia is still a big source for C and “semisubmersibles” have been a big delivery vector — near submarines that can’t quite submerge but stay very low in the water; if they’re intercepted the crew ditches and gets rescued according to the Law of the Sea, with the evidence on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. A crewless craft of that type would be a forward step for the smugglers, since the authorities are thinking of classing unflagged semisubmersibles as being some kind of special class of unlawful so their crews can be prosecuted.

I like how it was pointed out that only because america is full of mindless consumers that the drug trade is prosperus in the first place. The entertainment industry there demand “C” and has hundreds of millions to contribute thanks to a economy that is based around class warfare on a social and financial level.

Actually, the drug trade isn’t lucrative enough to fund the development of special delivery boats because consumers exist, it’s that lucrative because the damn drugs are illegal and artificial scarcity makes them crazy expensive. Most recreational drugs would be pretty cheap if anybody could grow and distribute them without the risk of prosecution.

And what if it turns around on the water or the sail breaks down then it fucked.
On the video it wasnt clear to me what they pushing in that loads of paste for just on top of the wires.
This whole things seems to be a terrible design.

I’m the admin for the microtransat site. When I saw your posted I checked the formula and realised it was wrong and have since corrected it. I had found this mistake ages ago and thought it was fixed but either I hadn’t saved it or it crept back in somehow.